Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost
October 13, 2024

We Walk by Faith, Run by Doubt

Matt Helms
Associate Pastor

Genesis 18:1–15
Hebrews 11–12, selected verses

I know the author of Hebrews was using it as a metaphor for faith, but I’d feel pretty remiss to read the words “run with perseverance the race that is set before us” and not acknowledge the fact that the Chicago Marathon is going on as we speak, with an estimated 50,000 people taking part in a race that truly is a testament to the human spirit. Running a marathon is an amazing achievement, with some estimates stating only 1 out of every 200 people will run one in their lifetime. So we join the city in cheering on every participant today, praying for their health, endurance, and success and celebrating all of the training, dedication, and sacrifice that went into making this day possible.

If you, like me, have never run a marathon and don’t particularly have any intention of doing so, you may be surprised to learn there is still some hope for us all: a little over a decade ago, a man named Fauja Singh became the first person to finish a marathon at the age of 100 — a feat made all the more remarkable since he didn’t take up running until he was in his 80s, and even then the odds had long been stacked against him.

Singh grew up in India, the youngest of four children, and was apparently so sickly as a child that he was unable to walk until the age of 5, with neighborhood kids giving him the nickname “Stick” all throughout his grade school years due to his gangly appearance. Talk about a triumph of the human spirit: a child unable to walk until the age of 5 running marathons at the age of 100.

Singh was once asked about the challenges of running at his age, and he said “The first twenty miles are not difficult. As for the last six miles, I run while talking to God.”

We’ll just take his word for it on the first twenty miles piece, but those last six miles are the focus of our passage from Hebrews today — those times not when things are going well for us, but when they are a struggle.

We don’t know exactly what this early Christian community was facing. Hebrews was written by an anonymous author and may have even been more of a sermon than a traditional epistle or letter. Regardless, the wider arc of Hebrews seems to be written to a community struggling with doubt — doubts about Christ as Messiah, doubts about Christ’s return, seemingly even doubts arising out of early persecution of Christian communities.

In the face of that doubt come the beautiful words of the passage we read today: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. By faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.”

The rest of Hebrews’ eleventh chapter goes on to invoke some of the most foundational figures of faith from scripture — Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, Jacob and Esau, Joseph, Moses — telling how, by faith, they held to God’s promises until those promises eventually came to fruition.

It's a beautiful and hopeful passage, but close readers of the biblical text will also note that it’s not exactly the full story. In fact, we get a taste of that in our first lesson today. Abraham is lifted up time and again, not only in Hebrews but in Paul’s letters as well, as a sort of exemplar of what it means to have faith, but Genesis 17 and 18 pretty clearly show a time when Abraham and Sarah are filled not with faith but with doubt.

Abraham, upon receiving God’s promise that he would be the ancestor of a multitude of nations (Genesis 17), responds to God by “falling on his face and laughing, saying to himself, ‘Can a child be born to a man who is 100 years old? Can Sarah, who is 90 years old, bear a child?” And Sarah has a similar reaction in the passage we just read, laughing at God’s promise — only to be accused by God of laughing — leading to her denying that she laughed and God denying her denial. It’s a humorous scene, but that humor disguises the bitter disappointment that both Abraham and Sarah are clearly carrying with them. They are laughing at the absurdity and the audacity of what God is claiming. After all, it’s been twenty-five years since God first told Abraham that he would be the father of a great nation, and yet here they were with little to show for it and every reason to be holding doubt.

And that same thing is true for almost every name on that list that the author of Hebrews mentions in the eleventh chapter. In verse 20 he writes, “Isaac invoked blessings for the future on Jacob and Esau” — conveniently leaving out the part where Jacob tricked Esau out of his birthright and blessing and had to go on the run away from his family and homeland for decades. Joseph may have been Jacob’s favorite son, but that didn’t stop him from being sold by his brothers and thrown in prison for years after false accusations made against him. And Moses, for all his faith, still clearly let doubts creep in during those forty years in the wilderness, when the promises of God seemed unattainable.

If you have ever felt guilty about harboring doubts about your faith, I hope it’s clear that there is a rich biblical history of people struggling with doubt and disbelief in the face of adversity, struggle, and uncertainty, even as those same individuals end up being cast as an example of what it means to have faith. Because try as we might to walk by faith, far more often our lives are run by doubt — which in turn can lead to us feeling unfaithful or lacking.

That’s been true for me at many points in my life, which includes my time here at Fourth Church as a pastor. I was incredibly involved in my church growing up, but that didn’t stop my faith from being shaken when I wrestled with how to read the Bible as I moved away from the literal understanding I held when I was younger, or from seeing how much others in the world were experiencing scarcity when I grew up with more than I needed. I’ve sat with genuinely good people suffering from unfair diseases and diagnoses in my time here at Fourth Church, and all I can think to ask God is “Why?” The same is likely true for all of us as we’ve watched the damage in Florida over these past seventy-two hours or read tragic stories of terror and violence and war — or whatever it may be. Where is God’s kingdom in the midst of all of this? Where is God’s love?

Those are hard questions, and they don’t have easy answers. But I’ve been trying to remind myself that real faith is not defined by an absence of doubt. Indeed, as Lord Alfred Tennyson once said, “There lives more faith in honest doubt than in half the creeds”. Instead, that doubt makes us who we are: it pushes us to find answers, it brings us into honest conversation with God, it forces us to ask big questions about the part that we have to play in the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work in this world. So if, as pastor and author Rob Bell puts it, “our doubt is a sign that our faith has a pulse, that it’s alive and well and exploring and searching” — how can we harness that doubt, seeing it as a facet of our faith rather than it’s enemy?

I don’t know where you are in your faith journey — those twenty miles where things feel relatively easy or those six miles where you find yourself talking a whole lot to God — but in those times when I feel more run by doubt than faith, in those times when I am struggling to understand where God is at work in this world or even in my life, the thing that most often gives me faith again — the thing that helps my “conviction in things not seen”, as Hebrews puts it — is using those doubts to push me outside of my normal rhythms and routines and to experience the myriad ways God’s love is being put into action by others, both inside this community and outside it as well.

For example, there are hundreds of tutors at this church — some members, some not — who faithfully meet with students each week, not only because they want children to learn but because they want them to know how much they matter and are loved. Our church has an amazing group of Deacons and Stephen Ministers who directly contribute to making this place one of genuine compassion — whether that’s in sitting one-to -one with those going through difficult circumstances or calling each member for prayer requests throughout the year.

There’s the community of our Zoom Morning Prayer gatherings each Wednesday morning, as that faithful group gathers together to hold one another and our community and world in prayer. There’s our Sunday school and youth groups, where kids are able to blossom and grow in their faith and in their knowledge that they are an important and beloved part of this community.

Whenever I am feeling low or harboring doubts, I look at the incredible outpouring of love and generosity that others are bringing to this community and millions of others like it, and I can’t help but feel like I’m catching a glimpse of God’s hands at work.

There is such a beauty in being part of a much wider cloud of witnesses — again, as Hebrews puts it — because the more we see and honor that image of God in one another, the more we can slowly but surely start to see God at work in this world again. We keep on doing the good that is ours to do because, ultimately, we do believe that God is at work in this world, even if we are in a time or a season when we cannot see or feel it. “We believe, help our unbelief” — as Tom is so fond of saying — quoting that great passage from the ninth chapter of Mark, which captures the tension between faith and doubt that all of us face, no matter how much faith we are perceived to have.

Thomas Merton was a Trappist monk and one of the great spiritual authors and theologians of the twentieth century — someone you would never think would hold significant doubts about his faith or his contributions to the wider church — but at the peak of his career, he wrote the following in his book Thoughts in Solitude:

“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore, will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. Amen.”

We may not know exactly where we are going next — either in our lives or as a wider church — but in times of faith and in times of doubt, we keep on moving forward, trusting that in our desire to follow God, we will indeed be led the right way. We keep on striving to do the good that is ours to do, trusting that whether we see the end result or not, any effort to share God’s love with someone else will not be done in vain. And in those times when our doubts are greater than our faith, those metaphorical six miles when we run talking to God, we press on, spurred by our doubts to once again seek the places where we can find God at work in this world and thankful we do so among such a great cloud of witnesses. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church